Senior Tory MPs including a former Cabinet minister today urged the Government to write into law a requirement for planners to consider infrastructure around new housing projects.

Nick Herbert, a former justice minister, moved an amendment to the Growth and Infrastructure Bill in a bid to add the proposal to the Government's plans. The amendment was signed by 16 Government MPs, including former chief whip Andrew Mitchell.

But Planning Minister Nick Boles rebuffed the move, insisting the Government's national planning policy framework already told planning authorities to take such consideration - and that it was a lack of money which actually caused the problems.

Speaking during a report stage debate on the bill, Mr Herbert said: "New housing is necessary in this country.

"But the principle in the Localism Act is that development should be sustainable and by definition that means that development should not make life for successive generations worse.

"The concern expressed to me by many of my constituents is that the level of local infrastructure at the moment is insufficient to support additional development which has already been undertaken.

"There is clearly evidence existing mechanisms are inadequate so we are moving from the previous system where the gain in development was captured under Section 106 agreements to a new system of the community infrastructure levy which is intended to ensure there can be investment in local infrastructure.

"But my constituents will want to hear from the Government how that will work and be assured that when new housing is planned for... there will be a sufficient mechanism to ensure the infrastructure will be put in place."

But Mr Boles said to legislate on this particular area while the rest of the new planning rules were written in to policy only would "upend the balance" in the policy.

He said: "Local authorities have not been in a position to adequately provide over the past 10, 20, 30 years the infrastructure improvements required to support housing development and other kinds of economic development.

"It is not for the fact this is not in primary legislation as a duty this failure has arisen. It is for the fact there have not been the dedicated sources of revenue to support that infrastructure.

"It is not that there are local authorities out there saying they want to build 5,000 houses and not build any more roads, not build any more primary schools, not put in better sewers.

"It's because they haven't had the dedicated revenue streams to do it this has not happened."

Shadow communities and local government minister Roberta Blackman-Woods said Labour continued to have concerns about the bill as it neared the end of its Commons stages.

She claimed the Government's plans to allow larger extensions without planning permission had caused "huge outrage" even in Tory-led councils.

She told MPs that English local authorities should be given the freedom to alter the limits of permitted development in their areas rather than have Whitehall change the rules across the country.

Under the proposals, launched by the coalition in September families will temporarily be allowed to extend detached properties by up to eight metres (26.2ft), with a maximum height of one storey, without requiring full permission, and rules on shops and offices expanding will be loosened.

Ms Blackman-Woods said Tory backbenchers were "really concerned" and had approached her in the Commons and "told me they agree with our stance on this particular issue".

She questioned how it would be possible to proceed with a development without the planning authorities getting involved in disputes between neighbours.

"The minister has given people up and down the country a licence to build completely inappropriate extensions that will have to be sorted out by a planning authority at some future date," she said.

Labour tabled amendments to remove Government plans for "employee ownership" from the Bill because the party said swapping employment rights for shareholdings would be a "nasty Dickensian piece of legislation".

Shadow business minister Ian Murray said: "This is certainly the worst clause in this Bill.

"The Chancellor has unified outright opposition from every quarter to this particular policy. It is a policy which received at best a lukewarm response by the business community and has been roundly trounced by employee organisations, trade unions, business leaders and charities.

"We cannot see any way of how this can be amended to make it more palatable."